Baiting
by The cursed child
Summary: Mara has to escape, and she's only doing that if she can distract her captors long enough with their own feelings for each other. Tag to 5x06.


Duke takes off his jacket and hands it to a gloriously blonde Audrey Parker, who lets go of Nathan for just long enough to have it wrapped around her naked form. The moment she is covered, though not nearly adequately enough for public appearance, she buries her head back in her partner's shoulder.

Blindly, she reaches for Duke's wrist and pulls him down for a hug, unwilling to let either of them go. They sit there for a while, basking in the elation that their threesome is complete again.

"Charming," Mara says from her place against the beam. Her wrist is still cuffed to the thing, which prevents her escape now that the unwelcome distraction is taking place. Her shoulder had nearly been ripped from its socket when Crocker let the unnamed Trouble out, though she can hazard a guess as to which one Duke and Nathan had chosen.

The three spring apart, and Mara rolls her eyes. The cops and the conman had completely forgotten her. Audrey stands up, making a great effort to let her men go. She might have looked imposing, were it not for the dress-like jacket and her tousled hair.

Now that she has their attention again, Mara contemplates her next words. She goes with baiting Audrey because she knows her double best. "You look nice," she mocks, eyes raking over the copy of her own body with deliberate slowness.

The blonde has her narrowed eyes focused on the original, the answer to all the question she has about her past and the origin of the troubles. "Seriously," Mara speaks up again, "I can barely look at you without laughing my ass of." A chuckle escapes her lips.

Audrey keeps freakishly silent, just staring. "Look, I know I'm hot, but could we move this along?" She fills the oppressive silence, hating that with Little Miss Perfect back, the boys will be impervious to her manipulation. Well, impervious up to a point, but she doubts there will be any one-on-one time to make her most recent plan work.

"We should just kill you," Nathan suggests, his hand on Audrey's shoulder as he reaches for his gun. His partner reaches back and encloses her hand over his, keeping the weapon holstered.

Mara doesn't even see the gesture because she throws her head back and laughs. "She might have her own body now, but she's still connected to me, Wuornos." She pronounces the last name wrong on purpose. "Kill me and she does 'poof' too." She's not actually sure it works like that, but her experience allow her to be pretty sure of the conclusion.

"We can always test that." Duke grabs his used knife off the floor and approaches her carefully.

"Duke," Nathan warns, the hypocrite. Weren't it for Audrey, he'd already have shot her.

"Don't worry, Nate, just a little cut. If Audrey gets it too, we know Mara's right." Duke reaches for Mara's cuffed hand, the chain rattling against the floorboards.

"Hygienic," Mara snarls at the blood-covered knife, trying to yank free from his grip and failing.

Duke snorts, feeling a lot lighter now that he's got his best friend back and isn't about to explode like some freaky cartoon character swallowing a bomb. He wipes the knife on his pants, which does nothing for the hygiene but does wonders for the red coating. "Don't worry, sweetheart, all clean."

He nips her fingertip, watching her unimpressed gaze following him. It's an act. He can tell by the rapid beating of her heart under his palm, which is pressed directly to her pulse point.

Audrey approaches, her own wound visible. "Guess that answers that," she smiles, speaking for the first time in what seems like ages. The quirk of her lip does not hide the look in her eyes. It's what he's seen before in cancer survivors. People who have crawled away from Death's door and fought to stay amongst the living, who run away from him as hard as they possibly can, because they know Death intimately. Mara looks the same when nobody is watching.

Duke puts his arm around her shoulder and presses her briefly into his side. "How about you go upstairs and sleep for a while?" She is swaying on her feet from exhaustion, having fought non-stop to ensure her continued survival. She is about to protest, her stubbornness shining through, but Duke gently marches her to Nathan. "Nate will stand guard, and I'll keep an eye on her until we decide what to do." He jerks his head toward their prisoner.

"We could call Dwight," Nathan suggests quietly. It's the first time in forever that his friend wants him to stay. Duke thinks the experience must mean hell has frozen over. He shakes his head. "I'm good."

Nathan squeezes his shoulder in appreciation and wraps his arm around Audrey waist to support her up the stairs. "Thank you," Audrey repeats, turning in Nathan's grip to kiss Duke on the cheek.

By the time his two friends are out of the picture, Mara has righted her chair and is rubbing her shoulder. "Now what?" she snarls.

Duke drags over a chair from the wall and puts it back-first across from the woman, wrapping his legs around it and resting his chin on his arms. There is no reason left to talk with her. Audrey isn't in there anymore, and Mara has no idea how to stop the Troubles, even if she wanted to.

"Don't know yet." He's trying to come up with something, anything at all, but ends up blank.

"How about I start than?" she smirks and Duke mentally braces himself for whatever is coming. She taps her lip, but they both know she already has her next sentence carefully constructed and on the tip of her tongue.

"Out with it," Duke encourages her. Mara has a plan for Haven, and the sooner he can get her talking, the sooner she'll let something slip. He just has to make sure he listens more than he talks, just behave like he does on a date.

"You broke her heart, you know?" Mara tilts her head to the side, waiting for his reaction. Sadly, Duke is good at poker, and doesn't let her know if her words had the desired effect. "Actually, I'm not in love with Audrey," she repeats his earlier words in a bad imitation of her companion.

"You told us she was already gone by then."

"I lied, it happens." She shrugs, wincing as the muscle in her shoulder protests. "Besides, I couldn't distinguish the difference between a broken heart and the shock of the toy belt at first." She raises a finger, pointing at his chest. "What I really don't know is if you lied or not. Tell me, I'm curious."

He is about to answer when Mara's eyes flick to something behind him. It's Audrey, because he knows Nathan wouldn't have let her go anywhere alone. Her partner must have fallen asleep.

"Why are you up, Audrey?" Duke asks without turning around. If his best friend hadn't been there, he could've tried to con her double, but not like this. It will do a lot more harm than good.

"Couldn't sleep," her voice replies. It's funny how different the two woman can sound with the same vocal chords. He can tell the difference between them without even opening his eyes. "I couldn't tell if you were lying either."

If he had been in his own body at the time, they would've seen his tells, but the switch apparently messed with human lie-detectors. He remembers, months ago, that Nathan had accused him of being in love with Audrey, and without hesitation he'd said 'Yeah'.

Now that the woman in question is asking the same, he doesn't hesitate either. That doesn't mean he'll tell her. Half-truths are his expertise, it's how he is still alive. So he ignores her thinly veiled question.

"Where's Nathan?" He turns to face her and to appreciate her night gown, which his jacket is mostly hiding from view.

She lets him change the subject with a knowing look in her eye. Small mercies. "He's sleeping upstairs. I don't think he's even rested his eyes in days. Neither have you by the looks of it."

Even with one less Trouble running amok in his body, he looks like death warmed over. His normally tan skin is pale, the bags under his eyes purple and his hands shaking where he has them pressed against the chair.

"Blah blah blah, Lover boy is fine," Mara interrupts. Her bored expression changes to curiosity as she leans forward. "I still want to know whether you lied or not." Duke's small mercies flew right back out the window.

Nathan stumbles back down the stairs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his knuckles.

"Perfect!" Mara jumps up from her chair and pretends not to be bothered as the other three reach for weapons. "Confession time. So Crocker, your answer please." Nathan looks confused as he moves closer to Audrey. "What's going on?" he whispers at his girlfriend.

"Nothing," she replies, "We should call Dwight, transfer her to a holding cell until we can figure out our next step." Audrey doesn't trust Mara alone with her friend, which is why she came down in the first place. She's dead on her feet, but the thought of her double alone with Duke kept her mind too busy to sleep.

"Guys, come on," Mara pleads with a grin on her face, "Didn't you learn anything from your body-switching experiment? Keeping secrets is not healthy, deadly even. If you work with the Troubles that is."

"What are you talking about?" Nathan snarls, taking a threatening step toward Mara and subconsciously moving in front of Audrey to protect her. "Still convinced that you are Audrey's one and only, Nathan? 'Cause I'm pretty sure at least one of you is hoping for a three-way."

The villain that tells the uncomfortable truths is nice and all, but when she exposes yours, it suddenly gets a lot less amusing. Mara succeeds in her goal, which is to unbalance them. Her victims exchange questioning gazes, too tired and emotionally overstimulated to see the ploy for what it is. That doesn't mean that there isn't a core of truth in Mara's words.

The awkward silence has taken long enough, now for the breaking point; "Or are you still denying you and Duke could actually get along even without the Blonde Barbie playing mediator? Let's at the very least admit that you want to find out if Duke's mouth tastes like the freedom of the sea. He so does, I would know."

Mara has them all dumb-struck, and is hoping somewhere deep down that one of the boys will speak up and tell her they've already tried that once. The very idea alone is scorchingly hot. She can see Audrey contemplating it, her head swaying side to side as if she were watching a tennis match between Nathan and Duke, who are refusing to look at each other.

Mara can't wipe the grin off her face, especially not when the cuff gives up and unlocks. Now she only has to avoid the knife and the guns to escape and come up with something new while her companions are distracted with the newest revelations.

They are sluggish, so if she can make it to Duke's car, who didn't take his keys out of the ignition, she's safe. The guy has bullet-proof tires. Smart man.

Three, two, one. She's up and out the door before any of them can react. Duke's car door opens without any trouble and the keys twist flawlessly. She hits the gas, but doesn't get far as her belt activates and she loses consciousness, shocks wrecking through her body.


End file.
